burning down the house
by eponnia
Summary: Hunger Games AU. Éponine Thénardier, co-Victor of the 74th Games with Marius Pontmercy, meets Capitolite film director Julius Enjolras at the President's Mansion. [Mainly Enjonine with one-sided Meponine and background Mosette. 2012 filmverse one-shot.]


**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **The title is from "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads.****

* * *

Somewhere, a glass shatters.

Éponine flinches and suddenly all she can see is the Arena and her drunk father throwing bottles against the wall of their home in Twelve and blood on her hands as cannons fire and–

"Éponine?"

Trapped within her thick fog of memories, she desperately hopes that it is Marius saying her name as she whirls. But she blinks, realizing she is standing in the gardens of the President's Mansion and not in the Arena. She also recognizes that Marius has not spoken; in the rainbow-hued crowd of Capitolites, she can't even see him.

"You are Éponine Thénardier, correct?" the man says as she turns, his golden curls catching the light. He has the Capitol accent, but does not dress as strangely as the others do; his skin and hair and eyes appear refreshingly unaltered by surgery or cosmetics. But she appreciates even more that his voice is low and even instead of babbling in her face like other Capitolites would do, and unlike his fellow inhabitants of the city, he gives her room to breathe instead of invading her space and smothering her with obsessive energy.

Her hands still shake, but she focuses on Enjolras instead of the memories flashing behind her eyes. She cannot appear weak in front of any Capitolite, and never while the President is surely watching. "Yes. I am." She lifts her chin. "And you are?"

"Julius Enjolras."

Dimly, she recognizes his name, and thinks of the Capitol films she had watched on the trains to and from the Arena and while on her Victory Tour. Hadn't his name been in the credits of a few of them? An Avox passes with a tray of champagne, and the woman dutifully pauses by Enjolras. He thanks her as he takes two flutes, and Éponine realizes she has never before seen a Capitolite truly acknowledge an Avox, let alone express gratitude to the tongueless slaves.

"I wondered if you might want to participate in a documentary," he begins, handing her one of the glasses. The gold watch on his wrist shines, and for a brief moment she think she sees the outline of a mockingjay on the glass face. "About the Victors, and the true effect of the G–"

"Éponine!"

She instantly turns to Marius, her co-Victor and her love for the camera's sake and possibly maybe definitely more. "Yes?"

"I need to talk to you. In private," Marius says, reaching for her arm, and her heart leaps into her throat.

"Could I find you later?" Enjolras asks.

"If you want," she says with a shrug, and follows Marius through the crowd, barely taking her eyes off her fellow Victor.

She hopes that when they end up in a shadowed alcove that Marius going to do something romantic. He does lean in close, but only whispers, "Valjean said we should dance. To keep up appearances."

"Of course," she breathes. Even if it's because their mentor suggests it, she's not turning down this opportunity.

Her bright smiles and adoring looks on the dance floor aren't fabricated. But when she sees Enjolras in the crowd as Marius spins her, she can't read the Capitolite's expression.

* * *

The next time she sees Enjolras, they are in Thirteen.

She has survived the Arena twice, surely she can survive Marius being captured and tortured by the Capitol. But her heart convinces her that she won't be able to go on if Marius dies, even if the mayor's daughter who Éponine and Montparnasse used to sell strawberries to is the one Marius is starting to love and even if Thirteen's President Javert needs Éponine to be his Mockingjay.

Enjolras is there when she walks into Thirteen's cafeteria for the first time after being released from the sickbay. He is talking with a group of men, and she vaguely recognizes them as the Capitolites who had defected from their city. But she does not have the energy for their heated conversation, and so she sits by herself. Everyone gives her a wide berth – for who wants to be around the damaged girl who killed children? – but she does briefly make eye contact with Enjolras across the room.

* * *

The next day, she intends to sit by herself again. But upon spotting her, Enjolras strides across the room.

"May I join you?"

She almost refuses, but nods and keeps chewing her bland meal. What Thirteen lacks in personality, they make up for in quantity. There's not as much food as in the Capitol, but it's more than she ever had back home.

"How are you finding Thirteen?" he asks, setting down his tray and sitting across from her.

"It's better than the Arena," she deadpans. "And how is it for you, Capitol boy?"

"Better than the Capitol," he says firmly. She is somewhat surprised – if she had had his life, she might have been tempted to stay for the sake of the luxuries the Capitol could provide – but then again, he did voluntarily leave his home for an underground bunker in the middle of nowhere to wear gray jumpsuits in the name of freedom.

"Do you remember what we spoke of when we first met?" he continued.

"At the President's Mansion?" She raises an eyebrow. "The documentary?"

He nods. "About the effects of the Games on the survivors. Not the glory, not the fame, but the truth."

She doesn't say anything.

"I wouldn't have been allowed to make something like that in the Capitol," he adds. "But here–"

"So you want to use me?" she cuts in. "Tell my story to get tears from your audience?"

"No. The project has changed." He leans forward. "Javert wants to make propaganda films, hack into the Capitol's systems, and show the footage there. To tell the Districts that you, the Mockingjay, are alive. That the revolution hasn't died." She starts to protest, but he goes on. "However, I don't want it to be just propaganda. I want everyone to see what the Games for what they truly are, and I want you to describe it."

"And what if I don't want to?" Éponine shoots back. "I already lived it. Why should I have to talk about it?"

"Because you inspire the people, and they will listen to you." Enjolras stands from the table. "This is bigger than all of us–"

The television screen on the wall flickers to life, and Marius' thin face appears next to President Louis-Philippe d'Orléans. Éponine scrambles out of her seat to run towards the screen and drink in the sight of Marius talking and breathing and being simply alive.

* * *

"I will do your propaganda films," she tells President Javert a few days later, Enjolras sitting nearby at the table along with other leaders of Thirteen. "But only after you rescue Marius, and pardon him of any crimes you may find against him."

"Miss Thénardier," Javert says firmly, "we can't be sure we can get him from–"

"If you do not put every effort and every resource Thirteen possesses into saving him," Éponine snarls, eyes hard, " _find someone else to be your Mockingjay_."

The room falls silent. Éponine risks a glance at Enjolras, who gives her the barest hint of a smile. She doesn't return it.

After a moment, Javert sighs. "Anything else?" he says, an edge to his voice.

Éponine swallows. "Don't get rid of Gavroche's cat."

* * *

The day the team goes out to officially rescue Marius, she finally agrees to film the propaganda.

The lines Enjolras gives her to say in the videos aren't stupid, and part of her wishes they were, so she can blame that. The problem is that the script _is_ grand and magnificent, and coming from him the words would fit perfectly. But falling from her lips, they are awkward and forced. She never talks this way, is comfortable in the fact, but for Marius she tries.

Yet it is Enjolras who coaches her, Enjolras who tells her to think of the Districts, Enjolras who tells her to think of all of the Victors who suffered as she did, Enjolras who tells her to think of the dead children in the Arena and the ones she could save in the future. He should be in front of the camera, not behind it. It is clear Javert would rather have the golden Capitolite as the Mockingjay – not the girl who doesn't have Enjolras' silver tongue, who doesn't have the face anyone would follow, and who doesn't inspire the way he does.

But no one gets exactly what they want, now do they?

Éponine leaves the moment it is announced that Marius has arrived, and runs to the sickbay where he is being hooked up to IVs, alarmingly thin and startlingly pale. Cosette is not far behind her, but Éponine reaches him first.

Marius puts his hands around Éponine's throat and slams her head against the floor.

* * *

Enjolras visits her in the sickbay.

She still can't really talk, the bruises deep on her neck, and if he has come to ask her to film more propos she'll throw her breakfast tray at him, oatmeal and all. But he just stands there for a moment.

"How are you feeling?"

She silently taps her neck brace with a fingernail and raises an eyebrow.

"Point taken." He pauses. "How are you doing? After… everything?"

She looks down and picks at her hospital gown.

"Marius says he remembers you," he offers, and her eyes meets his. "Yes, he's still hijacked–"

 _So he remembers that the Capitol convinced him to try to kill me_ , Éponine thinks.

"But he did have a moment where he remembered you. Before the Games," Enjolras adds.

Even if she could physically talk, she wouldn't know what to say in response. She looks away, and hears his footsteps as he leaves.

* * *

Everything progresses slowly after that.

Marius still wants her dead, but her vocal chords eventually recover enough to film more propos. She does it for Marius, even though sometimes it feels like there's no point. He's still convinced she's a monster, and part of her doesn't want to deny the label. She's the child killer here; the only thing he did that was vaguely threatening in the Arena was blow up the Careers' food stores. He has never physically harmed a soul in his entire life.

Well, until her.

But what hurts worse is that Cosette can go into Marius' hospital room and sits on the edge of his gurney and talk with him, and he doesn't try to slaughter her. Éponine guesses that the Capitol hadn't tainted Marius' memories of the blonde and instead focused all of their energy of warping his recollections of his co-Victor.

It worked, because the Capitol is nothing if not thorough.

Enjolras finds her after Marius had once again screamed about her being a mutt when she had tried talking him. Éponine quickly swipes at her tears as Enjolras approaches her hiding spot on a shadowy stairwell, but he surprises her by sitting down beside her.

"If it's any consolation, I'm sorry about everything that's been going on with Marius."

She manages a faint smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "Thanks."

"I wish I could fix this for you," he adds, and an odd feeling blooms in her chest. It's not a lily of emotion opening her heart wide, but instead a rosebud barely rustling at the first hint of spring because she can't remember the last time someone went out of their way to do something in order to make her happy. "But I can't, and I apologize."

"Don't," she says. "I know you want to right every wrong, but it's okay if you can't solve all of the world's problems." The corner of her mouth turns up. "I admire you, though. All I do is survive. You _live_."

"I wouldn't sell yourself that short." She notices again just how blue his eyes are as he continues. "You made it out of two different Games and kept other people alive in the middle of the Arena."

She thinks of Azelma Jondrette, the girl she had almost thought of as a sister, even though they had barely known each other a month by the time Azelma died in Éponine's arms in her first Games. "Not all of them."

"But you saved Marius. Twice."

Éponine's gut clenches. "Once. We saved each other in our first Games, and then the team got him out of the Capitol. I didn't save him from the second Arena. Not really."

"It's not your fault he was captured and hijacked," he counters.

"Yes, it is, because I shouldn't have left him at the tree in the Arena–"

"Éponine, listen to me." His gaze locks with hers. "It's the Capitol's fault for twisting his mind, not yours. And he's safe now. You need to stop blaming yourself for everything."

"You think it's that easy?" she shoots back, tears welling in her eyes. "You think I can just get over my failures at a moment's notice?"

"For your own sake, you need to try," he says in a low voice. "What you've gone through is brutal enough without beating yourself up and adding to the bruises on your heart yourself just because you think you're a failure."

"Why do you care?" she asks, voice cracking. "Is it because you want a Mockingjay with a stable mental health so Panem can see a perfect image of the rebellion's poster child?"

"No. Mockingjay or not, you deserve to be kinder to yourself."

"Why do you care?" she repeats.

"Because you are a fellow human being with value."

She had once considered herself strong, but she can't stop the tears that prick at her eyes again. Éponine is used to the art of crumbling, now. But instead of telling her to get ahold of herself like so many others would do, he lets her lean against his shoulder and wordlessly offers himself as her anchor. As tears drip over her cheeks, run down her jaw, and collect at the point of her chin, she thinks about the fact that no one – not her parents, not her almost father figure of Valjean, not even Marius – has ever been willing to take on the world for her and her alone, except for–

And then she scrambles away from Enjolras if she was touched by fire – then again, maybe she has been – and bolts down the stairs away from him. He calls her name, but she doesn't look back, because she's already fallen in love in the middle of a war once before and she doesn't want to deal with the inevitable heartbreak again.

So she runs.

* * *

She avoids him after that.

It almost works for a while. She sits as far away from him as she can in the cafeteria, will turn and walk in the opposite direction if she sees him a hallway, and crosses to the other end of the meeting hall if she spots in the crowd during one of Javert's speeches. But they are still filming propos, and she makes a point not to talk to him more than necessary during the filming process.

Marius is no longer as convincing of motivation, because it is clear her chance with him is gone. Even as he recovers and stops trying to decapitate her with his bare hands, it is beyond obvious the love his battered heart can still provide is for Cosette. Éponine has tried valiantly to give up her hopes for him loving her instead, attempting to carve her own feelings from herself, and refuses to think of Enjolras. She doesn't have time or the strength to fall in love again and to have the relationship dissolve like it surely will again. She tells herself again and again she is not destined for romantic love. If it doesn't come from Marius, then surely she won't find it elsewhere. She will focus on Gavroche and ignore her longings for a different kind of love outside of her family.

She sometimes dreams in fiery gold and piercing blue, but in her waking moments, her stubbornness almost works.

But then Javert orders Éponine, an almost sane Marius, Enjolras, and his camera team into the field. They need real footage, the president says, and authentic sound bites to show that the face of the revolution is actually doing something for Panem.

When they are on the outskirts of the Capitol, she focuses her attention on keeping Marius in one piece. Enjolras is always there, of course, directing Combeferre and Courfeyrac's cameras or hovering somewhere in her peripheral. But she resolutely ignores Enjolras as she constantly tells Marius to think of Cosette, and pushes away the ache in her chest, because emotions are weakness and she can't be weak while walking through minefields.

There is one night where they are sleeping in a bombed out building and Enjolras, lying beside her on the concrete, sees her silent tears in the darkness. But she rolls over so her back faces him and ignores the urge to press herself against his side and allow him to comfort her.

* * *

But she can't ignore Enjolras completely, because one day they break into a Capitolite's lavish apartment and he has a strange look on his face. But then they find the apartment's owner dead in the living room with a bullet hole already in the young man's forehead, and Enjolras falls to his knees beside the body.

"Jehan…"

"He's long gone. There's nothing we can do," Combeferre says, voice cracking, but Enjolras is shaking like Éponine has never seen before, and so she carefully puts a hand on the blond's shoulder. Enjolras doesn't flinch like a Victor would, and so she pulls him into her arms, lets him weep against her neck, and tells herself she is doing this as a friend and nothing more.

* * *

But then only the very next day they are making their way towards the President's Mansion once more when the hologram map beeps and the street explodes beneath them.

Ears ringing, she lifts her head from the ground where the blast had thrown her and sees that Marius seems to physically be in one piece, but then she turns to see the unmoving Enjolras a few yards away with a leg missing and the remaining one covered in blood.

She barely registers that she screams as she crawls over to him, slicing her hands open on the concrete pieces as she goes to Enjolras' side. All she can think about is he can't be dead he can't be dead I can't lose him as her trembling hands check for his pulse.

Thirteen manages to airlift Enjolras out, and as she watches the hovercraft take him away while tears dry on her skin, she resolves to kill President Louis-Philippe not just for Marius and not just for herself, but now for Enjolras as well.

* * *

She dreams of Enjolras again that night.

In her mind's eye she is crying on the staircase again somewhere in the belly of Thirteen, and Enjolras joins her on the steps. But this time his left leg stops at the knee and she clings to him to convince herself that he is alive.

Éponine wakes gripping her own sleeping bag in her hands instead of what she thought was his clothes.

* * *

When she watches Gavroche die outside the President's Mansion a month later, Marius holds her as she screams herself hoarse. But for the first time in her life, she doesn't want his arms around her.

* * *

After the Capitol falls, Javert arrives in the city, and the Mockingjay dutifully greets him at the landing pad even though the look in the interim president's eye unnerves her. But after she salutes Javert, she sees a wheelchair descending the hovercraft ramp, and before she registers her legs are moving, she is running to throw her arms around Enjolras' neck.

"You're alive," she sobs. "I thought you were dead, but you're alive and you're here."

"I'll be wherever you need me," he says, and she cries even harder because what has she, the child killer, ever done to deserve someone like him? But then he angles his head and whispers "Remember who the real enemy is" into her hair, and suddenly she knows the war hasn't ended.

So at Louis-Philippe's public execution a week later, Éponine risks a glance at Enjolras before she sends an arrow straight into Javert's heart.

* * *

After Lamarque is elected president by the citizens and the best doctors in all of Panem give Enjolras a prosthetic leg to please the terrifying Mockingjay, she and Enjolras watch the sunrise from the President's Mansion.

"So what happens now?" she asks, his arm around her waist as she leans against him.

"I don't know," he admits, and she realizes she's never heard him utter those words. He's always been the one with a plan and a vision and a purpose, but even he is at a loss. "All I know is I don't want to stay in the Capitol."

"You said once you wanted to rewrite the laws of Panem," she reminds him gently, but is careful to say the words in a way that won't make it seem like she's holding his feet to the fire. She knows firsthand how war changes people, and the ways dreams change when you're so broken you don't know who you are anymore.

"I still do, but…" He draws a shuddering breath. "I can't stay in the Capitol. Maybe in a few years, I could– But I _can't_. Not now."

She knows what it's like to be suffocated by memories of a place. "You don't have to," she murmurs. "You are free to go wherever you wish."

What a strange feeling freedom is.

"Do you want to go back to Twelve?" he asks.

"No," she replies. Twelve is her parents – how they survived all this, she doesn't even want to know – and memories of Gavroche and memories of Marius. "I want something new. Something simple. Something safe."

"I want that too," he says in a low voice, and she thinks about the director she had met here in this mansion only a year ago, and how Enjolras then would never have wanted quiet and simple. But war changes everyone and everything it touches, and Enjolras now can never be who he was.

"Maybe I could eventually go into a local government in one of the Districts, but not... not the Capitol," he says, ghosts in his eyes, but then he looks at her. "And what do you want?"

"To be with you," she says simply, and presses her chapped lips against his. The sun bathes the city in golden light, and the former Mockingjay rests her head on the shoulder of the Capitol's disgraced son.

Their fingers weave together as she slips her hand into Enjolras', and in the end, that is all Éponine needs.


End file.
